Leon Gambetta

Leon Gambetta (2 April 1838-31 December 1882) was Prime Minister of France from 14 November 1881 to 30 January 1882, succeeding Jules Ferry and preceding Charles de Freycinet. He was prominent during and after the Franco-Prussian War, emerging as one of the founding leaders of the French Third Republic before becoming a left-wing republican leader.

Biography
Leon Gambetta was born in Cahors, France on 2 April 1838, the son of a Genoese grocer and a French woman. Gambetta studied law in the Latin Quarter of Paris, and he came to become an inveterate enemy of the Second French Empire of Emperor Napoleon III, becoming a hardcore republican. He was called to the bar in 1859 and elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Bouches-du-Rhone ten years later, and he became a well-known defender of the lower class.

Gambetta was initially opposed to the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, but he later took a patriotic line and accepted that the war had been forced on France. After Emperor Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan, Gambetta proclaimed the creation of the "French Third Republic" at the Hotel de Ville in Paris, and he decided to set up a government in Tours as the Prussians continued to besiege Paris. Gambetta escaped the besieged city in  a hot air balloon and flew to Tours, where he joined the rest of his government. Gambetta later moved the government to Bordeaux, continuing the struggle. After the conservatives and monarchists won two-thirds of the National Assembly seats in 1871, Gambetta resigned from the government, and he retired to San Sebastian in Spain for several months. Gambetta returned to the political stage and succeeded in pressing for constitutional laws in 1875 that ensured that the Third Republic would remain in power. Gambetta became a leader of the "Opportunists", and, in 1877, he denounced clericalism as the enemy of the republic. Despite this radical view, Gambetta persuaded extreme partisans to accept a moderate republic, and he also prevented Patrice de MacMahon's advisers from usurping control of the government. Gambetta died in Sevres in 1882 at the age of 44.